The invention relates to the field of tennis playing and practice devices and provides an apparatus by which one can develop his skill with a tennis racket without the need for a large court area and by which one may be taught to properly strike the ball in even a relatively small room or other training area.
Over the years many tennis training devices have been developed and tested, but none of the known devices provides a generally acceptable tennis training tool. For example, it is not sufficient to merely provide a ball-type target which the player can strike with a racket. It is critical that the player be able to differentiate a proper stroke from an improper one. There is little benefit in training one to strike a ball so hard that it will be driven out of play or so poorly that it will strike the net. With the now known training apparatuses, a player has no way of knowing with reasonable certainty whether his stroke is within the range of acceptability or whether it is poor angled and unsatisfactory. A training apparatus which differentiates acceptable and unacceptable racket blows is needed.
Another serious shortcoming of the existing tennis apparatuses is that most have a ball or ball-like target rigidly fixed to the end of a pole or arm, and a tennis player striking such a rigidly attached ball does not get the feel of striking a live or free ball. When the ball is rigidly confined to the end of such an arm, it simply does not respond, act or feel the same to a tennis player as a live or free ball. Accordingly, the present devices do not provide a ball-like target which feels like a free ball and therefore the player does not become accustomed to the feel of a free tennis ball. Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an apparatus which is able to capture the feel of a live ball while still constraining it sufficiently to use the device in a relatively small area.
Another shortcoming of many known tennis apparatuses is that after being struck, they tend to spin or oscillate for an unreasonably long period before stabilizing to receive the next blow. It is desirable that a training apparatus return the ball to its initial position rapidly.
Still another shortcoming of the known tennis playing apparatuses is that they are generally cumbersome, occupy substantial space, and sometimes even require permanent anchorage to a court or floor. The invention disclosed herein provides a solution to these problems and represents a substantial improvement in tennis playing apparatuses.